Ender's Review: Dec. 12

Resist the Call of Power; Read Your Newspaper; Our Movie Year; Barbershop; these articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this week in -

Ender's Review of the Web

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the week of Dec. 12 - 18, 2004.

Table of Contents: (Click on the name to go to that section)
Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
Spreading Decentralism, The New World Hegemon, Politics by Other Means;
Spontaneous Order, Nonspontaneous Disorder, War Is The Health Of The State;
Bits of History, War and Peace, Great Individuals In History;
Culcha', The lighter side, Deep Thought, Miscellany.

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Political Liberty
Articles showing a positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.

Bill of Rights Day
by Kathryn A. Graham from The Libertarian Enterprise
"The Bill of Rights was written specifically to chain its own government -- to prevent the infant government from ever interfering with certain basic rights. The Bill of Rights was never intended to grant the rights enumerated within. Those were assumed to be ours by virtue of our having been born human beings."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2004/tle300-20041212-03.html

Instead of reform, end Social Security
by Star Parker from The Detroit News
"There is only one honest approach to Social Security: Fulfill obligations to pay benefits to those who have already paid in and allow the rest of us as quick and expeditious an exit out as possible. Then shut the doors forever."
http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0412/14/A11-32437.htm

Seven Years on the Sidewalk
by Jennifer Gonnerman from The Village Voice
"On December 7, the state legislature finally voted to change the laws by softening some of the most severe penalties." With the worst injustices gone from the Rockefeller drug laws [of New York state], Randy Credico gropes for a new strategy to repeal them.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0450/gonnerman.php

Life in Amerika
Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

Pain Doctor William Hurwitz Found Guilty
by Drug Policy Alliance from The Free Liberal
"Under-treatment of pain largely stems from heavy-handed Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) monitoring of prescriptions. Those considered to over-prescribe are arrested, leaving many physicians afraid to appropriately treat their patients with strong pain medications."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000531.html

Fact-free teaching on sex
by Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times
"Although the federal government has determinedly refused to study whether any correlation exists between teaching abstinence and actual abstinence, the social science that does exist demonstrates very little positive impact. The handful of states that have studied it found no long-term success in delaying sexual initiation."
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/12/Columns/Fact_free_teaching_on.shtml

Higher education in decline II
by Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com
"The nation's primary and secondary education is a national disgrace; will we allow our undergraduate education to become so as well? If we continue down our present course, the answer is an unambiguous yes. To change course, we need to start examining the incentive structure that college administrators face."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20041215.shtml

Ordered Liberty without the State
Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

Resist the Call of Power
by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Each of us will pursue our own efforts. Each will chose what they will do to replace the institutions of State power. There must be no political process to decide what we will do. We must practice freedom to build freedom."
http://www.endervidualism.com/tomender/resist_power_call.htm

Individualism, Individual Responsibility and Freedom
by weebies from Strike The Root
"While it is utopian to think that everyone will not kill, steal, and lie (defraud in free market business transactions), society depends on individual people following these basic principles in their everyday life. Civilization is built on these foundations of individual responsibility. Only the state, on a collective basis, violates these rules with impunity."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/weebies/weebies6.html

The Passive Capitalist -- Property and its Lack of a Relationship with Force
by Ray Daugherty from anti-state.com
"A society can feature property rights as one of its perks without ever initiating force against a human being; in fact, whether a society is collectivist or individualist is completely independent of how passive or aggressive it might be. "
http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=447

Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Read Your Newspaper -- While You Still Can
by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything
"[N]ewspapers cannot specialize. The web can. This isn’t critical, but it is another of the countless nibbles of the web at the sagging flesh of newspapers. If you care about planetary exploration, for example, why read a newspaper when you can go to the sites of NASA, the European Space Agency, and Astrobiology magazine? Newspapers by deliberate policy provide dimwitted coverage. A reader invariably finds that he knows more than the reporter about anything that interests him. (Well, sometimes. Often reporters know a lot, but they have to write for the eighth grade. The effect is the same.)"
http://fredoneverything.net/Bloggery.shtml

States Should End the Drug War
by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"Once the feds are disarmed in the war on drug makers and consumers, the states should repeal their own laws against production, sale, and possession. All prescription laws should also be repealed. Then we will have real individual freedom and self-responsibility. Self-medication is as inalienable a right as self-education."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0412b.asp

Crunch Time At The U.N.
by Henry Lamb from NewsWithViews.com
"The solution to the world's problems is not reform of the United Nations. The solution lies in the nations of the world finding a new way to address common problems."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Lamb/henry65.htm

The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power

The Whole Orange Thing -- In Ukraine, beware the simple storyline -- from either side.
by Matt Taibbi from New York Press
"This whole debate, it seems to me, is ridiculous. Of course the U.S. is improperly influencing the domestic politics of places like Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia. It has been shamelessly injecting its proteges in ex-Soviet governments ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, and it has used groups like Freedom House and the NDI and USAID to funnel money to all sorts of unsavory characters."
http://www.nypress.com/17/50/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

Reality Catching Up to Empire?
by Alan Bock from Antiwar.com
"In circles beyond the rather small war-at-any-cost crowd, however, the reality of the war in Iraq and questions about the consequences of war on a more-or-less continuing basis are starting to matter. For starters, there's the little matter of money. The latest news is that the Bush administration will ask for $80 to $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, rather than the more 'modest' $70 to $75 billion it had privately told members of Congress before the election that the tab was likely to be."
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=4176

Attack of the Mommy Monster
by Bob Wallace from LewRockwell.com
"When the government goes beyond those minimal functions then it turns into the State. All that hectoring and irritating it does -- for our own good, of course -- is bad enough. But somewhere along the line, it just goes plain nuts. It gets too big and then it gets wacky. It goes from government to the State to a Monster."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace194.html

Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Next Target: Iran?
by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute
"If the United States can negotiate with the erratic Kim Jong Il in North Korea, it can certainly do so with the authoritarian mullahs in Iran. The secret in both sets of negotiations might be to recognize that these 'rogue states' might be genuinely frightened of a U.S. invasion and willing to accept a non-aggression pact with the United States in exchange for a verified elimination of their nuclear weapons."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1438

I Am A Conservative Christian, And The Religious Right Scares Me Too
by Chuck Baldwin from NewsWithViews.com
"Of course, the sad truth is, neither George W. Bush nor the Republican Party in Washington, D.C. represents genuine Christian or even conservative principles. If they did, they would take their oaths to the Constitution seriously and then neither liberals nor conservatives would have anything to fear, for the U.S. Constitution protects the rights and freedoms of all men."
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin205.htm

Israel's Fifth Column in Washington
by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com
"With the threat of Communist spies somewhat abated by the death of Communism as a viable ideology, a fresh (if not equally dangerous) threat has arisen to take its place, one that employs the same Leninist technique of boring from within -- and mobilizes the ample talents and resources of an indigenous fifth column ideologically committed to the Cause."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4178

Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.

In Praise of Shoddy Products
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"In times of massive and frequent technological improvement, it would be sheer waste for manufacturers to dump resources into making products last past their usefulness. In computers, for example, to make them durable enough to last more than 6 years would be a big mistake in today's environment."
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1701

Privatize the Roads
by Michael Tseng from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
"Along these lines, I advised the caller that rather than worrying about the politics of the state transportation system, her efforts would be better directed at attempting to divorce transportation from politics. She asked me what she should advocate instead. This was my modest proposal: the complete privatization of all roads and transportation infrastructure."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6486

Welcome to capitalism, North Korean comrades
by Andrei Lankov from Asia Times Online
"North Korean men ... were afraid to lose the trappings of a proper state-sponsored job that for decades had been a condition for survival in their society. While men were waiting for resumption of 'normal life', whiling away their time in idle plants, the women embarked on frenetic business activity. Soon some of these women began to make sums that far exceeded their husbands' wages. "
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FL14Dg01.html

Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Happy Bill of Rights Day
by Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com
"The officials who violate the Bill of Rights are breaking the very law that supposedly brings their jobs and the government that employs them into existence. And yet we are supposed to take them seriously when they talk about 'the rule of law,' 'law and order,' and 'justice'."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory49.html

Sticker Shock
by Will Wilkinson from Reason
"Mother Nature experiments; traits that work stick. Our system of public schools imposes on everyone a relatively uniform model of curriculum and pedagogy, and crowds out private experimentation. No variation, no evolution. No wonder our schools are so dismal."
http://www.reason.com/hod/ww121304.shtml

Agency Culpable in Child Support Scam
by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com
"When a fraud is so blatant, there is a tendency to blame the victim for somehow facilitating his or her own victimhood. But Barreras, who works as a corrections officer in law enforcement, attempted repeatedly to expose the fraud and to protect himself."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/1215.html

War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Gary Webb R.I.P.
by Robert Parry from AlterNet
"At Webb's death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he -- along with angry African American citizens -- forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans."
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20742/

Client State -- Moral Values and [Voluntary] Servitude in Bush's America
by Chris Floyd from CounterPunch (scroll down on page)
"There are too many powerful people making too much money off a system of corporate rapine and military aggression to allow any reality or humanity into the equation. To keep the patronage flowing from the White House table right down to the convenience store cleaner dependent on his boss making money from the workers at a local weapons plant millions must pay ritual obeisance to the dolt at the apex."
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd12142004.html

Another Iraq Exit Strategy -- What is so strategic about leaving a place that you hold hostage?
by Jeremy Sapienza from Antiwar.com
"There is nothing as gross as a liberal. Not because they're leftists (of whatever shade), but because they are uninteresting white bread and Freedom Slop moderates with no coherent ideology. Down with Republican war! ... but Democratic war is dandy. Baghdad bombs bad, Belgrade bombs good -- seemingly for no other reason than the party affiliation of the presidents who dropped them."
http://www.antiwar.com/jeremy/?articleid=4144

Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.

Bill Moyers Has the Social Diagnosis Right? It Just Ain't So!
by George C. Leef from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
"Moyers is apparently under the impression that it is some recent development that the power of the government has been harnessed for private gain. ... Looking back over U.S. history, one finds that attempts to use the government for private gain began early on and have never let up."
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6490

Retiring in Chile
by José Piñera from Cato Institute
"The Chilean retirement system was originally based on exactly the same principle that guides the United States' system. It originated in 19th century Prussia, where Bismarck created a pay-as-you-go-system. But such a defined-benefit system is not only hostage to demographic trends, it also has a fatal flaw: it destroys the link between individual contributions and benefits, or, in other words, between personal effort and reward."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-13-04.html

The Case for Ebeneezer
by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com
"The morally culpable wrongdoers in this shakedown of my client, though, have to be the spirits, who trespass, at night, upon the quiet enjoyment of my client's premises to terrify him with previews of his own demise should he not succumb to their demands to part with his money."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer93.html

War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.

Japantown, R.I.P.: An American Holocaust
by Ali Hassan Massoud from Strike The Root
"Apologists for FDR and the US government often explain that 'it was war.' Begun by a sneak attack by people of their ethnicity too, and the government had to respond."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/massoud/massoud9.html

The Definition of Insanity
by Brandi Neal from CommonDreams.org
"We obviously haven't learned from the mistakes of the recent past and history is sadly repeating itself. An unjust war, no clear enemy, millions of tax dollars going to a war we don't understand. In Vietnam we were told that it was our duty to stop the spread of communism. Bush says we attacked Iraq to stop the spread of terrorism, but we are again fighting civilians with no clear goal."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1214-25.htm

A Year After Saddam's Capture -- Iraq is Getting Worse
by Patrick Cockburn from CounterPunch
"US commanders have been trying to build up and train Iraqi security forces but there is little sign of this working. In Mosul, supposedly a model for US-Iraqi co-operation a year ago, the 8,000-strong police force dissolved last month when guerrillas attacked."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12142004.html

Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out from the crowd.

Healer/Scholar - Paracelsus : Dec. 17, 1493
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine. He coined the word 'alcohol'. He used the name 'zink' for the element zinc in about 1526, based on the sharp pointed appearance of its crystals after smelting and the old German word 'zinke' for pointed. He used experimentation in learning about the human body. His hermetical views were that sickness and health in the body relied on the harmony of man the microcosm and Nature the macrocosm. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

Vocalist/Actor - Frank Sinatra : Dec. 12, 1915
from Spirit of Sinatra
"During this period [the '50's] Sinatra went through a vocal evolution from the crooning heartthrob to the more mature and interpretive artist. He covered the gamut of emotions with his albums and pulled it off each time."
http://www.spiritofsinatra.com/pages/bio.html

Filmmaker - George Stevens : Dec. 18, 1904
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"He was responsible for such classic films as A Place in the Sun, Shane, The Diary of Anne Frank, Giant and The Greatest Story Ever Told."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stevens

Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

Barbershop
Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Barbershop's storyline is not complex although it is illuminating and entertaining. The greatest strengths of this movie are in the characters who populate the shop."
http://www.endervidualism.com/agora/barbershop_2002.htm

American Splendor: Our Movie Year
Reviewed by Paul Buhle from New York Press
"Readers, especially younger readers, are not likely to appreciate the back story of himself and so many other neighborhood hipsters of the 1950s. He lived deeply in neighborhoods destined for 'urban renewal' devastation, for a little while seemingly frozen in time, with yard sales full of old, rare (and not yet remastered) 'race records,' offbeat music clubs only starting to warm up to the folk fare of the 1960s, and above all, old ethnics in neighborhoods ... trying to find a life as the rust belt spread."
http://nypress.com/17/50/books/PaulBuhle.cfm

A Whitewashed Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin from Slate
"The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111107/

The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

Rummy's Greatest Hits
by Mark Fiore from MarkFiore.com
"A gifted lyricist like this comes along only once in a generation. Now, just in time for the holidays, we are proud to bring you…." I'm not sure why The Village Voice hasn't picked this one up yet, but it hasn't.
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/hits.html

New Homeless Initiative To Raise Bottle Deposit To 12 Cents
from The Onion
"A bipartisan Congressional initiative passed Monday promises that relief, in the form of a national, 12-cent bottle-and-can refund, will soon come to the nation's estimated 600,000 homeless."
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4050&n=1

The benefits of dogs (and Special Toys)
by Dave Barry from International Herald Tribune
"I'm trying to convince my wife that we need a dog. I grew up with dogs, and am comfortable with their ways. If we're visiting someone's home, and I suddenly experience a sensation of humid warmth, and I look down and see that my right arm has disappeared up to the elbow inside the mouth of a dog the size of a medium horse, I am not alarmed. I know that this is simply how a large, friendly dog says: 'Greetings! You have a pleasing salty taste'!"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/17/features/bar18.html

Deep Thought
Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

Republicans Have Family under Attack
by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"First, what people think of as mental disorders are in fact actions and statements that others find disturbing. Attributing behavior to disease is no way to teach children self-responsibility. Second, psychiatric drugs can do serious harm. The proposal that children be subjected to stigmatizing diagnoses and dangerous 'therapy' without parental consent should be revolting to everyone."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0412d.asp

Reeding, Riting and Self-Esteam
by Bob Wallace from Strike The Root
"What we get instead are young people with an inflated (and therefore false) self-esteem, with nothing to back it up. You get that inflated pride on top, with shame underneath (and envy, too, which is why they expect entitlements without doing anything). They will never admit that shame, or that envy. They will, as is characteristic of human nature, blame their problems on others."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/wallace/wallace32.html

Why Drinking and Driving Should not be a Crime: Version 2
by Sean Gabb from Free Life Commentary
"No matter how friendly, or efficient, or honest the enforcement may be, the law breaks us into the notion that we have a duty of accountability to the authorities, and that this is for our own good. But to be obliged to stop our cars and provide a specimen is no different in principle from being made to carry identity cards and produce them on demand, or having to provide a set of our house keys to the Police, so they can more easily check us from time to time to see if we are receiving stolen goods or hiding bodies under the floorboards - or from being electronically tagged, so the authorities can see where we are at any given time."
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc015.htm

Miscellany
Articles not easily classified

The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel
by L. Neil Smith and Scott Bieser from Laissez Faire Books
"A compelling work of fiction, The Probability Broach is also an excellent example of how libertarianism could work in the real world, displaying solutions to law enforcement, the justice system, and more."
http://lfb.com/cart/affiliate.php?code=10571&stocknumber=FN8918

Y2K + 5
by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine
"Check the supplies you laid in five or six years ago, and either eat up or throw out all the stuff that wasn't designed to last: store-bought canned goods, powdered milk, powdered butter, margarine, cheese, etc. Don't even think about eating food from a swollen can."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe041215.html

Schoolgirl Tazered for Playing 'Scissors, Paper, Rock'
by Bob Wallace from The Price of Liberty
"'She was putting my officers' life in danger,' said Police Chief Richard Cranium. 'She threatened them with her fist, then used her index and middle finger to make scissors. She could have killed one of the officers, or all of them. We can't be too careful, even with a first-grader. Generally, we just kill people who do stuff like this, but we gave her a break because she was six years old'."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/12/13/wallace.htm

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